Category Archives: Mysteries

In 1980, the most plausible UFO sighting in British history took place. Known as “Britain’s Roswell”, what happened that night? Did soldiers on a U.S. Air Force base see advanced technology by a foreign power, or something of alien origin?

In 1997, 20,000 people in Phoenix, Arizona saw a cluster of lights was seen by as many as 20,000 people, . It is one of the biggest mass UFO sightings of all time. Can these strange lights be explained? Or were they of alien origin?

Sometimes, the best way to debunk a story is to read it. Case in point: The story about the discovery of ancient pyramids in Antarctica. Recently, this tale of intrepid explorers discovering a series of man-made structures on a continent that has been too harsh to support sustainable human life for millions of years went viral over the Internet.

The story was picked up by many news outlets and blogs throughout the world, and has made its way as a meme on Facebook and other social media sites. By all accounts, this story would sound like the greatest archeological discovery of a lifetime.

However, nearly everything about this article, including the pictures and descriptions of the “explorers” hint that this was merely a hoax. Even the news outlets that ran with the story are suspect. Whatever the case may be, the story is its own undoing.

History has shown any cataclysmic event in the world has resulted in not just grief and shock among the masses but a host of conspiracy theories also.

From the assassination of former U.S. President John F Kennedy to the death of Princess Diana, a member of British royal family; from the world-changing collapse of the twin towers in New York to the baffling disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, people have never shied away from putting their own spin on the details of an event when the reasons from the authorities concerned have failed to satisfy them.

Some conspiracy theories have been simply outrageous, while others have offered a kernel of truth. But there’s no denying the fact that conspiracy theories strongly influence the outlook of a certain section of people. Now the question is why do people give in to these conspiracy theories?

A study published in the journal Social Psychology in July tries to answer this question by suggesting that the need to be special and unique drives the people to believe in conspiracy theories.

More than 1,000 people took part in the study titled “I know things they don’t know!” that was co-authored by Anthony Lantian, Dominique Muller, Cécile Nurra, and Karen M. Douglas of Grenoble Alps University. “An intriguing feature in the rhetoric of people who believe in conspiracy theories is that to justify their beliefs, they frequently refer to secret or difficult-to-get information they would have found,” Lantian was quoted as saying by psychology news website Psypost in a report published in August.

“This fascination for what is hidden, emerging from conspiracy narratives, led us to the concept of need for uniqueness,” he added.

The researchers found evidence to support three main tenets of their hypothesis:

Space is full of unexplored mysteries and secrets. Despite Mankind’s achievements in Space Exploration, we have barely scratched the surface of what lies in deep space. Here are the 10 Biggest Space Conspiracies Of All Time.

Comparing the actual evidence to the Canadian claim of best evidence for alien visitation.

They call it “Canada’s Roswell”, supposedly the strongest evidence of extraterrestrial visitation ever in Canada. It happened at Shag Harbour, a small fishing port near the extreme southern tip of Nova Scotia. On the clear night of Wednesday, October 4, 1967, shortly before midnight, a number of witnesses observed a row of lights, said to be on a craft about 60 feet long, descend with a bomb-like whistling sound, hover above the water for a moment, and then submerge. Emergency crews responded to what they thought was a plane crash. Divers spent a few days scouring the harbor bottom, but found nothing. But then, a quarter of a century later, the story exploded into something the like of which we’d never seen. The Shag Harbour UFO became one of the best cases ever for proof of alien visitation… supposedly.

On the night the incident was reported, Coast Guard and civilian boats swarmed Shag Harbour looking for what they hoped would be plane crash survivors. All that was found was a patch of foam, described by the fishing boat captain who saw it as “At least 80 feet wide”, and that in the darkness he thought it was “yellowish in color.” Divers spent three days combing the bottom of the bay in the area where everyone thought the crash had happened, but they found nothing at all.

Often cited as the reason that Shag Harbour should be considered Canada’s best evidence for alien visitation is the number and reliability of the witnesses. The lights descending into the water were reported by about a dozen people, including a Mountie. Two more Mounties and a few other people called to the scene reported seeing one light bobbing in the water for a short time.

Another reason it’s cited as an important case is that a few other UFO reports were made in the weeks before and after this one in various parts of the province. But in fact, rather than strengthening the case, it dilutes and complicates it.

Some claim that certain common false memories are evidence for alternate realities.

Ever have one of those moments where you watch an old movie or pick up an old book, and hear a quote or see something that stands in stark contrast to what you thought you remembered? We all have. But what about a special case, where the exact same broken memory is shared by a large number of people? At first glance, it seems like this must be something different. It’s no surprise that any of us individually might remember something wrong; but for a whole group to share an identical false memory seems to suggest that there might be a new phenomenon at work. It’s been called the Mandela Effect.

The Mandela Effect is named for one of its most famous examples, that of Nelson Mandela, whose funeral some people remembered after he supposedly died in prison. Mandela was arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life in prison in South Africa, but he survived it and was released in 1990. He was President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999, and some of those same people said “Wait, he died in prison, I watched the funeral on TV.” He didn’t actually die until 2013; and every time his name came up, these same people said “Wait a minute, I thought he was dead.”

Now, this group who erroneously remembered that Mandela had died did not include me, but I’m sure some people thought he had. One who did was psychic ghost hunter Fiona Broome, who writes that she discovered that some people she knew also thought that Mandela had died. Seeking an explanation for what she described as an “emerging phenomenon”, she turned not to social science, but to some nebulous concept of alternate realities. In her own words:

The “Mandela Effect” is what happens when someone has a clear memory of something that never happened in this reality. Many of us — mostly total strangers — remember the exact same events with the exact same details. However, our memories are different from what’s in history books, newspaper archives, and so on. This isn’t a conspiracy, and we’re not talking about “false memories.” Many of us speculate that parallel realities exist, and we’ve been “sliding” between them without realizing it. (Others favor the idea that we’re each enjoying holodeck experiences, possibly with some programming glitches. In my opinion, these aren’t mutually exclusive.)

Is a lot of people remembering something wrong evidence for alternate realities? Not really.

D. B. Cooper. Most people are familiar with the basic facts: that in 1971, a man hijacked an airliner, demanded and received cash and a parachute, and jumped out the plane’s back door over the Pacific Northwest and was never caught or identified. Whether he got away clean, or was killed in the attempt, could never be determined. Even though the D. B. Cooper case continues to capture the public’s imagination, there is a lot of fact and fiction unknown to many fans.

On the afternoon of November 24, 1971, a man who looked mid-40ish, wearing a business suit, walked up to the counter of Northwest Airlines in Portland, Oregon. Using the name Dan Cooper, he bought a $20 one-way ticket to Seattle, Washington. He was the second-to-last person to board the plane, and while waiting for takeoff, he ordered and drank a bourbon and soda — unfortunately spilling half of it. Once airborne, he handed flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note, which said something to the effect of “I have a bomb which I will use if necessary, this is a hijacking, please sit next to me.” She showed it to fellow flight attendant Tina Mucklow and to the pilots. Cooper then asked for the note back, which is why its exact wording is not known.

Schaffner took the empty seat next to him as ordered and he opened a briefcase, and showed her what she described as red sticks with a battery and wires. He then dictated to her the following demands:

Take this down. I want $200,000 by 5:00 PM in cash. Put it in a knapsack. I want two back parachutes and two front parachutes. When we land, I want a fuel truck ready to refuel. No funny stuff, or I’ll do the job.

Schaffner conveyed this information to the pilot. Almost nobody on the plane knew anything unusual was happening; the whole episode was handled discreetly. Cooper added that if these instructions were followed, he would safely release everyone on the plane, except for the flight crew.

23 year-old flight attendant Florence Schaffner

The airline agreed and contacted the FBI for assistance making the exchange safely. The FBI collected the money from the Seattle First National Bank. Some FBI records say they used a Recordak high-speed microfilm machine to image the serial numbers of all the bills; other records say the bank had the money on hand with its serial numbers already recorded. The airline got on the phone and collected the four parachutes from local contacts. Two hours later, the exchange had been successful, and the plane taxied for takeoff, fully refueled.

Cooper instructed that the plane was to fly a specific route, from Seattle to Portland, to Medford, to Red Bluff, and then to Reno, all while staying below 10,000 feet and keeping the flaps and landing gear down. The plane was a Boeing 727, featuring the nifty “Airstair” rear access stairway under the tail. Cooper had released two of the flight attendants along with the passengers, but had kept Mucklow on board so she could show him how to operate the Airstair.

Frustrated that the money had not been delivered in a knapsack as he’d requested, Cooper began cannibalizing one of the parachute’s cords to do what Mucklow thought was tying the bundles of money to himself. About a half hour after takeoff, Cooper ordered Mucklow up to the cockpit with the pilots and closed the door, ordering them not to open it. At 8:13pm, over southern Washington, the pilots got a number of warning lights. The Airstair had been lowered, cabin pressure had dropped, and the cabin temperature fell sharply — it was -7ºF outside. Not knowing whether Cooper had jumped or not, they continued on to Reno as ordered and landed, causing a nice display of sparks (but no damage) as the Airstair briefly scraped the runway. After receiving no response from Cooper over the intercom, they chanced to open the door, and found him gone; all that remained were his clip-on tie, and a ton of cigarette butts. Nobody would ever see him again.

In 1991 two men by the name of Doug Bower and Dave Chorley rocked the worlds of ufologists and paranormal experts alike when they claimed to be the driving force behind the crop circle phenomenon of the late 1970s and beyond using little more than a plank of wood and a length of rope. This was a claim self-professed experts on the phenomenon dismissed as ludicrous, until the two men showed everyone how they did it.

Flanked by members of the press from across the world, in a small field in Warminster, the two men proceeded to methodically push over wheat using wood planks. A few hours later, they stood in the middle of a crop circle so perfect actual aliens armed with a Spirograph would have struggled to make one that looked any better. The men then explained to the waiting cameras that they’d been making crop circles this way for well over a decade, starting in 1976, shortly before similar looking crop circles suddenly started cropping up in other areas of the world.

According to Chorley and Bower, the decision to first start flattening wheat in 1976 was inspired by two things- a story Bower had heard while living in Australia about mysterious circles appearing in sugarcane fields, and a few too many pints of beer. In regards to the former, Bower was referring to a series of large circular patterns that appeared in fields in Tully, Queensland in the mid to late 1960s. Unlike modern crop circles which often feature amazingly complex patterns and uniform pressing of crops, the Tully Saucer Nests were simple, somewhat crude circles of destruction. Ufologists have long maintained that these circles were caused by UFO’s landing and subsequently taking off, hence the name “Tully Saucer Nests”. The more accepted alternate theory is that they were simply caused by whirlwinds touching down briefly.

Whatever the case, after Bower moved back to England, the two men became friends over a mutual appreciation of art and their favourite hobby- watercolor painting. They eventually began a weekly tradition of meeting for a few drinks on a Friday evening at the Percy Hobbs pub in nearby Winchester. One day in 1976, they decided to have their usual drinks outside and noticed the acres of pristine wheat surrounding them, which is when Bower recalled the story he’d once told Chorley of the mysterious circles that had baffled experts in Australia. With a glint in his eye, Bower turned to his friend and said, “How would you like a bit of a laugh?”

One hundred and two hours and 12 minutes after leaving the Earth, the crew of Apollo 10 was on the far side of the Moon. The two spacecraft — the command-service module and the lunar module — were traveling separately, and as they plowed ahead with their flight plan and had a bit of a snack, all three men heard some “spacey music” coming in over their headsets.

From the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, who’s body was found in a hotel water cooler, to the real life events that inspired The Exorcist, check out our terrifying list of the top 10 unexplained paranormal events.

Is the Denver International Airport really a headquarters for the New World Order?

On the surface, Denver International Airport seems like any other modern airport. It’s new, it’s clean, it’s big, and it’s modern. But some investigators have found more to it than meets the eye. Much more. Claims abound that Denver International was designed and built by the Illuminati as the headquarters for the global genocide that will trigger the New World Order.

An Internet search for “Denver airport conspiracy” reveals that there is a lot of talk about this, and that the specific claims and observations are numerous. Here’s an overview of the basics. According to the conspiracy theorists, Denver already had a fine airport, Stapleton International. But despite widespread protests, Denver International was built and opened in 1995, with fewer runways, thus reducing Denver’s capacity. Its construction began with five mysterious buildings that were completed and then buried intact, with the cover story that they were “built wrong”. Up to 8 levels of underground facilities are said to exist, and workers who go there refuse to answer questions about what they do. The entire airport is surrounded by a barbed wire guard fence, with the barbed wire angled inward, to keep people in, like a giant prison, not out like at other airports. And if viewed from the air, the runways are revealed to be laid out in the shape of a Nazi swastika. Questions about what the government might be doing in this underground base may have been answered in 2007, when fourteen commercial aircraft reported spontaneously shattered windshields as the presumed result of electromagnetic pulses.

“I was gonna rap with you about Paul McCartney being dead,” said a caller named Tom, a local student who had tuned in to DJ Russ Gibb’s show on WKNR-FM in Detroit, on Sunday, October 12, 1969. “What’s this all about?”

So it began. There had been a few murmurs around London of Paul McCartney’s death in 1967, but the rumor never really caught on. It had made its way to the States, first with an article in the Drake University paper, which then got picked up by a few college outlets and spread its way east. Now people were beginning to take note.

What fascinated them weren’t necessarily the facts of the death itself — though grisly, it was unremarkable: a car crash on an icy road in the early hours of November 9, 1966, which allegedly left the Beatles’ bassist lifeless and partially decapitated. It wasn’t even how the band had kept his death a secret, finding a look-alike bassist and continuing on as if nothing had happened.

What drew suspicious fans into obsession were the baffling clues that the remaining members supposedly slipped into the visuals of their album covers and in the lyrics and music of the songs.

So with Tom’s call on October 12 — and the on-air discussion that followed, along with the hour-long radio special WKNR produced later that week — the rumor of Paul McCartney’s death would become a phenomenon.

However, it was mostly accepted as a hoax the following month, when Life Magazine trekked to the McCartney country home in Scotland. After a brief bout of rude behavior, a frustrated Paul consented to an exclusive. He refuted many of the clues with perfectly reasonable explanations, and pled with the public to let him “live in peace.” So it was put to rest, Paul McCartney was alive and well. If only you could stop seeing the clues everywhere you looked.

Zipf’s law states that given some corpus of natural language utterances, the frequency of any word is inversely proportional to its rank in the frequency table. Thus the most frequent word will occur approximately twice as often as the second most frequent word, three times as often as the third most frequent word, etc. (More . . .)

Got it? After watching this video you will either feel brilliant or totally confused. 🙂

You can see Janet airplanes at several airports throughout the U.S. You can hear them on air traffic control. You can fly one in Microsoft Flight Simulator X. But you can’t buy a ticket on a Janet flight, and the people who fly on Janet flights can’t tell you, or even their families, what they do for work. It is seemingly an airline that flies to nowhere.

The multi-tiered secrecy surrounding the Janet jets, the unusual ways they operate and the places they go are one of aviation’s greatest legends. If it all seems like a big clandestine operation, that’s because it is.

Why is there a fleet of unmarked airliners at a guarded private terminal in Las Vegas? Where do they fly? Who flies aboard them? Even though these aircraft service the seemingly impenetrable top secret defense world, we can provide some answers.

No, “Janet Airlines” isn’t the shadowy carrier’s official name. That name stuck and became widely accepted once aviation enthusiasts discovered that the curious aircraft based out of a small private terminal (code named “Gold Coast”) on the west side of McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas use the callsign “Janet” while operating in civilian airspace.

It’s when Janet flights cross from civilian airspace into restricted military airspace that things get really interesting. One of the places these Janet 737’s go is located inside the airspace described as R-4808N on the map below. “The Box,” or “The Container,” as R-4808N is known, is off-limits. It is restricted airspace within restricted airspace, and incursions into its sanctum are most unwelcome. And yet, the unassuming white and red 737’s are shepherded through routinely, where they disappear before reappearing after different lengths of time.

On takeoff from Las Vegas, Janet flights communicate with McCarran Departure Control using a callsign like “Janet 210,” or “Janet 301.” Once airborne, the Janet proceeds northwest and McCarran Departure hands them off to Nellis Control. Nellis Control supervises the busy airspace across the southern part of Nevada.

Every now and then an idea comes along that upends how we see ourselves and our place in the cosmos. The rumblings of the next revolutions in our thinking may already have started. Here are four potential “what ifs” with the potential to change us forever.

For well over a century, some have claimed that people can suddenly and inexplicably explode into a ball of fire. The phenomenon is called spontaneous human combustion (SHC), and it has been described in many popular books on mysteries and the unexplained.

Though the term “spontaneous human combustion” is of fairly recent vintage, it was a rare-but-real concern to many in the 1800s. In fact, there are nearly a dozen references to people bursting into flames in pre-1900 fiction. The most famous example is Charles Dickens’s 1853 novel “Bleak House,” in which a character explodes into fire, though the phenomenon can also be found in the works of Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Washington Irving and others. In modern times, SHC has appeared in movies and on television shows, including “The X-Files,” and it’s even, sort of, the super-power of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in “Fantastic Four” comic books.

Spontaneous combustion theories

Fires do not typically start on their own. When investigators search for the cause of forest fires, they don’t assume that the flame ignited itself. Rather, they usually suspect that a careless camper or a lightning strike caused it. However, many things can self-ignite without exposure to flames, under the right circumstances, including coal dust, piles of compost and used oily rags.

But it’s a whole different matter to claim that people can suddenly burst into flames for no apparent reason. There is no doubt that bodies can burn; crematoriums routinely reduce the human body to ashes in the course of a few hours. The mystery of SHC lies in the supposedly strange circumstances under which victims burst into flames. Typically, the story goes, there is no obvious source of ignition, no open fires nearby that might set the person aflame. Furthermore, the victims are killed, and not, for example, only partly burned on one arm or a leg; SHC is fatal. Some claim that burning often seems to begin in the chest or stomach area, leaving the grisly remains of legs and hands intact. Others claim that the furniture and floors under and surrounding the victims (including even their clothing) remain mysteriously unburned.

A closer look

Some of these popular claims are simply wrong. For example, there are many photographs of supposed SHC victims that clearly show extensive burning and damage to the clothing and surroundings of the burned person. It’s also important to understand a bit of fire forensics: many fires are self-limiting; that is, they put themselves out naturally because they run out of fuel. Though the public often sees uncontrolled fires completely engulfing and burning down entire rooms and buildings, fires are unpredictable. It is quite possible, for example, for only a rug, bed, or sofa to catch fire without spreading to the rest of the room. Because fires normally burn upward instead of outward, there is nothing paranormal or strange about finding a victim in one part of a room burned to death while the rest of the room has little more than smoke damage.

Today we’re headed back in time, all the way back to the Vienna court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary, in the year 1770. There the scientific polymath Werner von Kempelen, then thirty six years old, brought forth a mechanical automaton: the figure of a man seated at a large wooden chess table, the cabinet below filled with clockwork. A volunteer from the audience stepped forward. Kempelen wound up the machine, and it reached out and made the first move, the clockwork whirring and ticking. The astonished volunteer was quickly defeated. Delighted with the mechanical marvel, Maria Theresa ordered many more performances. In fact, the Turk, as it was nicknamed for its Turkish clothing, toured the world for the next 80 years, defeating the world’s top chess players plus luminaries such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin, without anyone ever discovering its secrets. Although many skeptics published fine articles purporting that the Turk actually contained a child, dwarf, or legless adult chess player, or that it must have been secretly controlled by its exhibitor, the workings of the Turk remained one of history’s best kept secrets.

But all secrets are fleeting, and shortly before the Turk’s destruction in an 1854 fire, its last owner’s son, Silas Mitchell, published the revelation, proving that no skeptic had ever correctly guessed how it worked. In fact, no one had even come close. Over the years, three authors in particular had put forth the best known hypotheses, and Kempelen had fooled them all.

But the most intriguing mystery about the Turk would not turn out to be how it worked, but rather why a man like Kempelen would have built it. Kempelen was no Barnum. He was neither a showman nor a magician; he was an inventor and engineer of the highest caliber and held a series of important public works appointments in Maria Theresa’s government. The last thing he’d do would be to construct some sort of sideshow trick. The first of the three most notable proposed explanations came in 1789, by Joseph Friedrich, Freiherr zu Racknitz. He wrote a book based on his many viewings of the Turk and his friendship with Kempelen. Racknitz noted that the Turk’s exhibitor would always first open and close the cabinet’s various doors for the audience’s inspection. He concluded that a very small human operator was inside the cabinet, lying flat during the opening of the doors; and then, during game play, sat up, played the game on a small secondary chessboard, and watched magnetized needles on the bottom of the tabletop to learn what move the opponent had made. By Racknitz’s measurements, the hidden human would have had to be less than five feet tall, and less than seven inches high when lying flat. Kempelen refused to offer any assessment of Racknitz’s proposed solution.

In 1821, Robert Willis, an engineer of musical instruments, published a pamphlet with his own explanation of the Turk. Willis noted in particular that the order in which the doors were opened for inspection never varied. This, he proposed, was to allow a hidden human operator to move from one part of the cabinet to another, allowing the various cabinets to be shown empty in sequence. Then, to play, the operator would sit up, place his own hand inside the Turk’s arm, and watch the board through the thin fabric shirt covering the Turk’s chest.

The best known analysis was that of Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1835, which ultimately found in favor of Willis’ explanation but differed in that it offered far deeper reasoned analysis of why it must be so. For example, Poe noted . . .

Today we’re going to soar above the alkaline flats of the Nevada desert at speeds in excess of Mach 3, banking and weaving among the peaks, and come in for a landing at runway 32R at airport designation KXTA. We’re inside the restricted airspace of the Nevada Test and Training Range, operated from nearby Nellis Air Force Base. Commonly called Area 51 by the general public, this well-developed base on the shore of dry Groom Lake is one of the most famous mystery sites in the world, shrouded in rumor and wild claims of aliens and conspiracies.

In 2001, two friends and I took a Cessna Skyhawk from Las Vegas to Tonopah, closely skirting the border of the restricted airspace surrounding Nellis AFB. This happened to be just prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, at which time the restricted airspace was greatly expanded, and the route that we took then is no longer possible today. But at the time, flying past the radar facility atop Bald Mountain, we were able to legally look right down into Groom Lake, and took plenty of photographs and video. We were contacted by the air traffic control tower at Groom Lake, which was plainly visible from our position, and he asked us what our destination was. We told him Tonopah, and he asked if we’d like him to give us a direct vector to Tonopah. This was his way of saying “Maybe you’d like to veer away and go straight to Tonopah rather than hugging our border.” But as we weren’t doing anything wrong, we declined his offer and finished out our original flight plan. We saw a number of other landing strips scattered about inside Nellis, but none that were as well developed as Groom Lake.

Why were we able to do this, at a base that everyone believes is so top-secret? Everyone says the government denies its existence or that it doesn’t appear on maps. There is indeed one very big secret at Area 51. In the words of Joerg Arnu, founder of the Dreamland Resort web site: “The biggest secret about Area 51 is that it was never secret.”

In late 1950, the United States Atomic Energy Commission established the National Proving Grounds for the testing of nuclear devices, inside the Las Vegas Gunnery and Bombing Range. This huge area was subdivided into parcels called simply Area 1, Area 2, and so on; and only those Areas from 1 to 30 became a final part of the project. Area 51 was merely a leftover piece of land among many others.

The Central Intelligence Agency’s Project AQUATONE had resulted in the design of what would become the U-2 spy plane, but for security reasons, they wanted someplace more private than Edwards Air Force Base to develop it. In 1955, a team led by Lockheed’s chief designer, the legendary Kelly Johnson, flew around Nevada looking for an alternate site. They found one inside Area 51: the dry Groom Lake, which they described as “A perfect natural landing field… as smooth as a billiard table without anything being done to it.”

[…]

Security and confidentiality have been constant throughout Groom Lake’s history. Nobody outside the base has ever had access to whatever work was being done inside, and for a long time, everything that had ever happened there was classified. So conditions were ripe in 1989 when a guy named Bob Lazar told a Las Vegas television reporter that he’d been working there for the past year, reverse engineering alien spacecraft to learn how they worked. For years, Lazar enjoyed a good run of television guest appearances and other publicity.

A lot of people in the UFO community really wanted to believe Lazar’s story, as it so perfectly confirmed their conviction that aliens visit the Earth and that the government covers it up. But everyone who seriously fact-checked Lazar’s claims . . .

The latest theory and speculation about Bermuda Triangle is that there are multiple Bermuda Triangle-like zones on Earth. Conspiracy theories have been a part and parcel of mankind’s journey on earth. Every unexplained event or a natural occurring has always had an unscientific theory explaining it. These theories have been knowingly or unknowingly ingrained in the minds of our forefathers to our parents all the way through to our generation and possibly to the next.

With the 21st century world that we live in, the developments in science and technology have taken us beyond the realm of our solar system, our galaxy, all the way into theories about multiple universes and dimensions. Today, the scientists are working on solving equations about wormholes and inter-galactic travel. However, there are people in the world who disapprove the simple facts as we know them about the universe and genuinely believe in something unscientific.

Though science strives to explain every unexplained question in the world and the universe with logic and raw proof, there are still certain concepts or theories that remain mystically unexplained. Questions that have been and still are unanswered. One of these concepts or theories is about Bermuda Triangle.

The Bermuda Triangle is a section of our planet on the eastern sea front of the U.S. The Bermuda Triangle area, also known as Devil’s Triangle is the section of the North Atlantic Ocean situated in the space separating Florida, Puerto Rico and Bermuda Islands. It is said that many ships and airplanes have simply disappeared while flying or sailing over the Bermuda Triangle. Hundreds of hair-raising experiences have . . .

The archive of more than 12,000 UFO sightings is not the smoking gun to prove alleged sightings of flying saucers and little green men, but it’s a historical asset that chronicles decades of people mistaking meteors for something more.

“Proved to be practical joke perpetrated by one (redacted) … apparatus consisting of eighteen inch aluminum disk,” a July 7, 1947, report states. “Electrical condensers and wire was made in machine shop … and tossed from bldg (sic) into street as joke on (redacted).”

Though most of the reports perused by the Daily News meander toward the mundane — sightings of meteors blazing across the sky and weather balloons bobbing beyond the horizon — there are some gems.

Civilians and members of the military near Walker Air Force Base near Roswell, N.M., kept calling in UFO reports after the 1947 incident.

“People have this fascination when it comes to UFOs. We can have our speculation that it’s top secret, but we simply don’t know,” Greenewald, of the Black Vault website, told the Daily News.

The entire collection obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests spans more than two decades of digitized and searchable reports. It’s hosted on Greenewald’s site dedicated to sharing government documents.

Besides serving as a brilliant case study for the evolution of 1990s hairstyles, The X-Files taught an entire generation that Occam’s razor — the simplest explanation for strange phenomena is usually the correct one — is boring and stupid and completely wrong. No, the superior explanation is always 44 minutes of aliens and Sasquatches.

That same lesson applies to these four recent news stories, which are all so bizarre that even the Gillian Andersonest of Gillian Andersons would have a tough time denying the involvement of interstellar poltergeists.

#4. The Mars Rover Found a Mystery Rock (That Wasn’t There Before)

As far as exciting discoveries go, Mars has been kind of a wet noodle — the Opportunity rover has found no signs of ancient teleportation arks, atmospheric reactors, or dead John Carters. Just as it seemed we were all about to stop pretending we cared about any of Opportunity’s billion-dollar photographs of orange dirt, it sent back this picture:

That shiny rock wasn’t there two weeks prior. Scientists are baffled by the rock’s composition — it contains high amounts of sulfur, magnesium, and manganese, something they claim they’ve never seen before on the surface of Mars. Of course, all of this takes a back seat to the more pressing question: Who the hell put that rock there? Did it grow legs and crawl like the moon rocks in Apollo 18?

Yes, that is actually what that movie was about.

#3. A Wandering Pit Bull Was Found With an Old Black & White Photo in Its Collar

Earlier this month, animal rescue workers in Greenville, South Carolina, picked up a stray pit bull that had wandered into town with absolutely no identification … except for a completely unlabeled black-and-white photograph of a man from Grapes of Wrath times sitting on a porch banister and smiling tucked into its collar.

Presumably the photograph is a picture of either the dog’s human form before he was metamorphosed by a gypsy curse or the man that the dog was sent back in time to destroy. Considering that they have yet to find the dog’s owner or any explanation for its sudden, mysterious appearance, our guesses are as good as any.

We’re all familiar with ship disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle. Though many say they’re the result of some supernatural force, it’s far more likely that each incident is a case of a big, stormy ocean taking its toll on small, poorly-maintained, or simply unlucky craft. But when a ship disappears without a trace from a river, it’s harder to imagine an explanation. And the legend of the SS Iron Mountain is difficult to explain away.

Here is how her story is usually told. This is an excerpt of the version on paranormal.about.com, complete with the picture that’s most often associated with the SS Iron Mountain:

In June, 1872, the S.S. Iron Mountain steamed out of Vicksburg, Mississippi with an on-deck cargo of bailed cotton and barrels of molasses. Heading up the Mississippi River toward its ultimate destination of Pittsburgh, the ship was also towing a line of barges.

Later that day, another steamship, the Iroquois Chief, found the barges floating freely downriver. The towline had been cut. The crew of the Iroquois Chief secured the barges and waited for the Iron Mountain to arrive and recover them. But it never did. The Iron Mountain, nor any member of its crew, were ever seen again. Not one trace of a wreck or any piece of its cargo ever surfaced or floated to shore. It simply vanished.

Some versions go on to say that ghostly voices can be heard near the site screaming “They’re trying to hurt me! Help!”

As with most legends, there is some truth and some fiction. Let’s see if we can separate the two.

Many of us are Skeptical and do not Believe That Ghosts really exist, or even more May Appear in Photographs. But the Stories are A few Cases When the Photographs from Different years appeared Vague outlines of Faces and figures of people.

Many of Them Were Seen in the first half of the Twentieth century, when no template existed. So what WAS it really? Fans of Esoterica sure That Spirits of the Dead, and rationalists Argue That this is Just A reflection of the Light. But better make up their minds about these strange phenomena: here a selection of the most famous photographs from “ghosts.”

One of the most popular photos with “ghost” was made ​​in 1919. On A Group Photo of the Crew of the ship “Daedalus” for one of the men is Seen face. Claimed That this person Mechanics Freddie, WHO died A few days before , Fell Under the propeller blades. In the day When Photo WAS taken, Were Buried Freddie. THUS Man allegedly wanted to Say goodbye to friends and colleagues His.

In 1959, Mabel Chinnery WAS returning from the cemetery, WHERE He visited His Mother’s Grave. She Decided to Take A picture of her husband, WHO WAS Waiting for her in the car.The photograph Clearly Shows That in the backseat someone is. Mabel Easily IDENTIFIED in an Unknown Figure, His Mother A WHO died few years ago. Experts have studied the Long Photo and concluded That there WAS no manipulation of it WAS Carried out.

This photo dates from 1966 When A Man Decided to Capture the beautiful spiral Staircase Museum of Greenwich in the UK. When development on the photos appeared Silhouette of A Man Climbing the Stairs. About Maritime Museum Greenwich Often Say That there is wandering Evil Spirits. Many visitors hear strange sounds and see the transparent human figures.

In November 1995, DURING A Major Fire Burned Building Town Hall Vem in one of the counties of Great Britain. While the House WAS burning, none of the firefighters did not See the little Girl WHO then appeared on the developed Film. Skeptics Claim That the image Could BE Obtained in this Because of the smoke, and the scattered Light. But such Would A person Could Get A Girl Just Because of the smoke? It Turned out That in 1677 the building has burned, with fire culprit was fourteen Jane, who WAS Among the Dead. Perhaps her ghost wanders the Native Still places, scaring the locals.

Some say alien life forms have visited Earth throughout history. However, such claims are difficult to prove. Most UFO sightings and abductions are easy to dismiss as hoaxes or simple misunderstandings.

But what about the times when the little green men actually leave something behind? Or the artifacts people from ancient times have constructed to honor what could only be visitors from other planets? There are many strange objects in the world, both enigmatic and man-made, that are said to be proof of alien life.

10 • The Russian UFO Tooth Wheel

A Russian man found a strange piece of machinery from Vladivostok, the administrative capital of the Primorsky Krai area. The object resembled a piece of tooth wheel and was embedded in a piece of coal he was using to light a fire. Although discarded pieces of old machines are not uncommon in Russia, the man became curious and showed his find to some scientists. Testing revealed that the toothed object was almost pure aluminum and almost certainly artificially made.

Also, it was 300 million years old. This raised some interesting questions, as aluminum of this purity and shape can’t form naturally and humans didn’t figure out how to make it until 1825. Curiously, the object also resembles parts that are used in microscopes and other delicate technical devices.

Although conspiracy theorists have been quick to declare the find a part of an alien spaceship, the scientists researching it are not willing to jump to conclusions and wish to run further tests in order to learn more about the mysterious artifact.

9 • The Guatemala Stone Head

In the 1930s, explorers found an enormous, eloquently made sandstone statue in the middle of a Guatemalan jungle. The face carved in the stone didn’t resemble the facial features of the Maya or any of the other people known to have populated the lands. In fact, its elongated cranium and fine features didn’t seem to belong in the history books at all.

Researchers have claimed that the statue’s unique features depict a member of an ancient alien civilization that was far more advanced than any of the pre-Hispanic races of America we know about. Some even speculated the head might just be a part of a much larger construct underneath (this was found to be untrue). Of course, there’s a chance that the statue might be the work of a more recent artist or even a complete hoax. Sadly, we will probably never find out for sure: The head was used for target practice by revolutionary troops and its features have been destroyed to near obscurity.

8 • The Williams Enigmalith

In 1998, a hiker named John J. Williams noticed a strange metallic protrusion in the dirt. He dug up a strange-looking rock which, upon cleaning, turned out to have a weird electrical component attached to it. The electric device was clearly man-made and somewhat resembled an electrical plug.

The rock has since become a well-known mystery in UFO enthusiast circles. It has featured in UFO Magazine and (according to Williams) Fortean Times, a famed magazine devoted to mysterious phenomena. Williams, an electrical engineer, says the electronic component embedded in the stone has not been glued or welded into the granite. In fact, the rock probably formed around the device.

Many believe that the so-called Williams Enigmalith is a hoax, as Williams refuses to break it (but is willing to sell it for $500,000). Also, the stone device does bear a certain resemblance to heat rocks that are commonly used to keep tropical pet lizards warm. Still, geological analysis has apparently determined that the stone is around 100,000 years old, which (if true) would mean the device inside can’t possibly be of human creation. Williams is confident enough to let anyone research the Enigmalith on three conditions: He must be present, the rock must remain unharmed, and he will not have to pay for the research.

7 • Ancient Aeroplanes

Incas and other pre-Columbian people left behind some extremely puzzling trinkets. Some of the strangest are probably the so-called Ancient Aeroplanes, which are small, golden figures that closely resemble modern jet planes. Originally thought to be zoomorphic (meant to resemble animals), the statues were soon found to have features that look very much like fighter planes’ wings, stabilizing tails, and even landing gears. They were aerodynamic enough that when ancient astronaut believers (allegedly) made model planes with their proportions and fitted them with propellers and (again, allegedly) jet engines, they flew perfectly. All of this has led to speculation that the Incas may have been in contact with (likely extraterrestrial) people who were able to build advanced jet planes, and who perhaps even possessed the technology themselves.

Well, that, or these wonderful statuettes might just be artistic representations of bees, flying fish, or other winged creatures. As always, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

In December 1966, the body of 92-year-old Dr. J. Irvin­g Bentley was discovered in his Pennsylvania home by a meter reader. Actually, only part of Dr. Bentley’s leg and slippered foot were found. The rest of his body had been burned to ashes. A hole in the bathroom floor was the only evidence of the fire that had killed him; the rest of the house remained perfectly intact.

­How could a man catch fire — with no apparent source of a spark or flame — and then burn so completely without igniting anything around him? Dr. Bentley’s case and several hundred others like it have been labeled “spontaneous human combustion” (SHC). Although he and other victims of the phenomenon burned almost completely, their surroundings, and even sometimes their clothes, remained virtually untouched.

Can humans spontaneously burst into flames? A lot of people think spontaneous human combustion is a real occurrence, but most scientists aren’t convinced.

In this article, we will look at the strange phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion, see what believers have to say about it and try to separate the scientific truth from the myths.

What is Spontaneous Human Combustion?

Spontaneous combustion occurs when an object — in the case of spontaneous human combustion, a person — bursts into flame from a chemical reaction within, apparently without being ignited by an external heat source.

The first known account of spontaneous human combustion came from the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin in 1663, who described how a woman in Paris “went up in ashes and smoke” while she was sleeping. The straw mattress on which she slept was unmarred by the fire. In 1673, a Frenchman named Jonas Dupont published a collection of spontaneous combustion cases in his work “De Incendiis Corporis Humani Spontaneis.”

The hundreds of spontaneous human combustion accounts since that time have followed a similar pattern: The victim is almost completely consumed, usually inside his or her home. Coroners at the scene have sometimes noted a sweet, smoky smell in the room where the incident occurred.

What makes the charred bodies in the photos of spontaneous human combustion so peculiar is that the extremities often remain intact. Although the torso and head are charred beyond recognition, the hands, feet, and/or part of the legs may be unburned. Also, the room around the person shows little or no signs of a fire, aside from a greasy residue that is sometimes left on furniture and walls. In rare cases, the internal organs of a victim remain untouched while the outside of the body is charred.

Not all spontaneous human combustion victims simply burst into flames. Some develop strange burns on their body which have no obvious source, or emanate smoke from their body when no fire is present. And not every person who has caught fire has died — a small percentage of people have actually survived what has been called their spontaneous combustion.

The story goes that sometime in the 1950s the Cooper family of Texas bought an old house and moved into it. On their first night there, the father took a photo of Mom and Grandma posing with the two kids at the dining room table. Everyone was happy and smiling. They were living the American dream.

But when the photo was subsequently developed, they saw, to their horror, that what looked like a body falling or hanging from the ceiling had materialized behind them. It hadn’t been there when the father took the photo. So where had it come from? Was it an apparition of a deceased former tenant of the house? No one knew.

Is any part of this story true? No. It’s pure fiction, but it’s recently become attached to this creepy photo, which has circulated widely online. The story appears to have been invented sometime in 2013. At least, I can’t find references to it earlier than that.

But what about the image itself? It’s definitely older than the story. So what’s the real story behind it?

That’s a bit of a mystery. Its original source is unknown. The family looks like they’re from the 1950s, but that’s just a guess. And various details of the photo suggest that it’s been digitally altered, which would indicate a more modern origin.

Humankind has long dabbled in the supernatural, lured by the promise of obtaining power and enlightenment. Several texts have been devoted to this practice, outlining complicated and mysterious rituals that were presented as the key to achieving communion with otherworldly spirits.

10 • Greek Magical Papyri

The Greek magical papyri from the second century B.C. listed spells, rituals, and divinations. These included instructions for how to summon a headless demon, open doors to the underworld, and protect yourself from wild beasts. Perhaps most tantalizing of all, they describe how to gain a supernatural assistant, an otherworldly entity who does your bidding.

The most commonly found spells in the Papyri are divination spells—ceremonies that offer you visions of the future. One of its most well-known passages provides instructions for how to forecast upcoming events using an “iron lampstead,” “an offering of frankincense,” and an “uncorrupted and pure” child. After being placed into a deep trance, the child sees images flickering in the flame.

Among the Papyri’s most famous components is the Mithras Liturgy. This ceremony describes how to ascend through seven higher planes of existence and communicate with the deity Mithras.

9 • The Black Pullet

Originating in France in the 18th century, The Black Pullet focuses on the study of magical talismans, special objects engraved with mystical words that protect and empower the wearer. It was reportedly written by an anonymous officer in Napoleon’s Army, who claimed to have received the contents from a mysterious mage while on expedition in Egypt.

The Pullet includes detailed instructions for how to construct talismans out of bronzed steel, silk, and special ink. Among these invocations is a spell to call upon a djinn, a creature made of smoke and fire who will bring you true love. If your ambitions are slightly more cynical, then the Pullet also provides talismans that will force “discreet men” to tell you their secrets, allow you to see behind closed doors, and destroy anyone who is plotting against you.

The apex of the book’s mystical teachings is acquiring the Black Pullet itself—a hen that can find buried treasure.

8 • Ars Almadel

The Ars Almadel is Book Four of the Lesser Key of Solomon, also known as the Lemegeton, a significant grimoire of demonology compiled in the 17th century by an unknown author. This particular book of the Legemeton provides a blueprint for constructing an Almadel—a magical wax altar, somewhat like a ouija board, that allows you to communicate with angels.

The Almadel is composed of four Altitudes, or “Choras,” each of which corresponds with a unique set of angels with different domains. The text provides the names of the angels of each Chora (Gelomiros and Aphiriza, for example), the proper way to direct your requests to them (ask only what is “just and lawful”), and the best calendar dates for invoking them. It also includes brief physical descriptions of these angelic manifestations. The Angels of the Third Chora, for example, come in the form of “little women dressed in green and silver” wearing crowns made of bay leaves.MORE – – –